Dan Carlin
7 episodes listed below
Dan Carlin's solo essays connecting executive power, historical collapse, and American democracy.
Dan Carlin's Common Sense treats politics as a stress test for the republic, not a team sport. Recent episodes move from executive power and military obedience to misinformation, proxy wars, and the habits that let constitutional guardrails weaken in plain sight.
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The show is a monologue format hosted solely by Dan Carlin, who also produces the history podcast Hardcore History; there are no co-hosts or recurring interview guests. Each episode typically opens from a specific news event — an election dispute, a foreign military crackdown, a troop withdrawal, a contested executive order — and expands into a longer argument about the structural condition of American democracy. A central recurring theme is the growth of presidential power, tracked across Roosevelt, Nixon, Obama, and Trump, and what restrains a president who chooses to ignore institutional norms rather than laws. Historical analogy is Carlin's primary analytical tool: the fall of the Roman Republic under Caesar, Weimar-era collapse, and Nixon-era bombings are used to test whether the present moment resembles a known failure pattern. Military law is another recurring thread, with multiple episodes referencing Nuremberg precedent and the U.S. v. Keenan case on a soldier's duty to disobey unlawful orders. Coverage of Donald Trump is extensive and consistently critical, though Carlin describes himself as a political independent who broke a decades-long habit of voting third-party specifically to oppose him. Episodes also revisit foreign policy blowback, particularly CIA support for the Afghan Mujahideen during the Cold War and its long-term link to the Taliban and the September 11 attacks. The tone across episodes is argumentative and reflective rather than newsy, with Carlin frequently citing books, memoirs, and historical texts rather than interviewing sources directly. Release schedule and episode length are both irregular, with gaps of months between shows. The show suits listeners who want long-form historical and legal reasoning about a political event rather than daily news reaction or panel debate.
Made for: Politically engaged listeners who want long-form historical and constitutional analysis of executive power rather than daily news commentary.
What sets it apart: Unlike most political commentary shows, Carlin builds each argument from historical and legal precedent rather than reacting to daily news, and releases episodes irregularly, only when he has a fully developed argument.
Loud, fast-talking and deceptively funny, this politically-independent "forward-thinking pragmatist" looks at the events shaping our world through a uniquely American lens. It's smarter than you think, and faster than you expect.
Based on 5 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Common Sense tests political alarms against constitutional design, historical precedent, and the discipline of applying one standard across factions.
Dan Carlin builds political commentary around a recurring question: what happens when Americans excuse powers and tactics because their own side is using them?
Every presidential power looks different once Dan Carlin asks you to picture its next owner.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
Carlin turns presidential power and military obedience into a tense warning about America's weakening safeguards.
"Who's the Boss?" finds Dan Carlin back in constitutional alarm mode, starting with Bangladesh's former leader being sentenced to death after a military crackdown on protesters and turning quickly to the American question: what keeps presidential power from becoming…
Carlin turns partisanism into a constitutional warning about executive power, restraint, and whether the republic can still hold.
Dan Carlin returns to Common Sense with a warning about partisanism and the older constitutional fear he thinks it has exposed: a president willing to exploit weak points in a system designed to keep America from drifting toward monarchy.
Carlin uses Cold War proxy logic to question later American confidence and the thin line between strategy and hubris.
Dan Carlin opens by bristling at the idea that political commentary becomes a lifetime obligation, then moves into the more interesting problem: how great powers justify risky bets when direct war is too dangerous to admit.
Dan Carlin links 1970s unrest to modern misinformation with a blunt warning about political violence and civic collapse.
Dan Carlin's "Garbage In, Garbage Out" is a sharp warning about how a country talks itself toward political violence. He begins with Richard Nixon's account of 1970, a year Nixon described through bombings, threats, property damage, and deaths, then treats that period as a…
Carlin turns emergency powers and partisan hypocrisy into a bleak question about whether the republic can still restrain power.
Dan Carlin opens with a confession that the political moment has forced him to test his own assumptions. He is not just warning about Trump; he is worrying aloud about whether a mind built around flexibility can survive a truly foundational adjustment.
Atlantic staff writers and host Hannah Rosen unpack Trump-era foreign policy, economics, and democracy.
Two hosts and a correspondent unpack one Latin America story a week, from Chile's election to Iran's war.
Andrew Sullivan's one-on-one interviews on pardons, Israel, Christianity, and political journalism.
Ryan Evans interviews defense and intelligence insiders, from Ukraine's front lines to Marine marksmanship doctrine.
Lawfare's weekly panel turns Supreme Court rulings and war-powers fights into legal debate.
Derek Thompson interviews one expert per episode to test big claims against the data.
Bangladesh is the flare.
Partisanism is the disease named right away.
Dan opens a little off-rhythm and sharp.
Nixon's memoirs supply the spark.
The host starts with an admission: people keep asking why he has gone quiet.